Platform Nine and Three Quarters
Platform Nine and Threee Quarters
Luke 15:1-10
Sept 16, 2007
Luke 15:1-10Now the tax collectors and "sinners" were all gathering around to hear him. 2But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."
3Then Jesus told them this parable: 4"Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.' 7I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
8"Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.' 10In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
“There is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent.”
Now isn’t that a just disappointment! Sinners get more attention from heaven than us righteous people! Makes me want to go out and sin! Well, not really – I do enough of that without planning it. Truth is, that this isn’t about just those sinners outside the church repenting – but we insiders, too. The lost sheep is part of the shepherd’s responsibility – an extension of his care. The lost coin represents the woman’s daily needs – each coin represents the ability to live another day. The one who has lost the sheep, or the coin, is diminished until it is restored. Fullness of life, not just making do, or making it through, is God’s purpose for us.
It serves us well to remember that the purpose of the church, you’ve heard me say it before, is to be a hospital – a healing place – for sinners. Too often in our culture the church has become a museum for saints, a place where socially respectable folks gather to pat each other on the back and declare their relief and satisfaction to be not part of the lost sheep. And the lost sheep, bruised and battered with life struggles, simply don’t feel welcome. Just because we say they are welcome, they don’t necessarily hear us. Someday, some may think, when they get their lives cleaned up to be acceptable, they might come. Others give up hope ever being acceptable and assume no one will ever miss them. We know that we had to come as we were – if we’d waited until we were ‘acceptable’ none of us would have ever come.
It grieved me to hear this week, and I’m sure it will grieve you, too, that someone who grew up in this congregation and has returned to the community after a difficult situation in their life, couldn’t bring themselves to return and face members of this congregation. Their sense of shame and brokenness has led them to seek fellowship in another congregation rather than risk what they anticipated would be rejection here!
That is really not how I see this congregation, I don’t think that is how we see ourselves, and hopefully is not how we are. But somehow, sometime, years and years ago seeds were planted in that person’s life that today brings a harvest of seeking a church home elsewhere. I’m sure that was never intended, but friends, we must recognize that we have to be diligent and intentional about loving people like Jesus does. Sometimes our actions implicating acceptance based on respectable and appropriate demeanor can speak so loudly that our words of welcome are drowned out. None of us is here because we’ve got it all together. Every one of us messes up and needs the Savior to come bring us home.
Another member of the congregation came to me this week with concern over an advertisement many of us have seen. It shows a woman finding a red cord and following it to a place where others have congregated, each having followed ‘their own path.’ And the words are spoken as they form across the top of the screen “Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors. The people of the United Methodist Church.” I don’t particularly like that ad. But that ad isn’t about me, or whether I like it. The question I have to ask myself is “if someone comes, because of that ad, am I willing to open my heart and love them like Jesus loves them?
I hope the answer is “of course I am!”
How many of us came into the sanctuary through the Narthex door? How many through the hallway door? Probably none of us came through either of the transept doors, and only the choir came in through the chancel door. But it does not matter how we got into the sanctuary or what road we took to get here – what matters is that once we are here we focus ourselves on the one way to God, and that is through Jesus Christ! That ad isn’t supposed to appeal to me, I’ve already found my way here. I don’t have to understand it, I don’t have to like it, but I do need to love those who might come because they are seeking a way to connect with God and happened to see that ad.
There are lots of things I don’t understand. I don’t understand why James has multiple piercings, but I love him. I don’t even understand pierced ears; why does someone need to put extra holes in their ears? I don’t understand it – my mother always had pinch earrings. Another thing I don’t understand is makeup… I know it is important because my wife tells me it is, but that doesn’t mean I understand it!
Some of you understand those things, I don’t! I don’t have to understand, because it isn’t about me. And in case you I’m picking on the women; guys, I don’t understand 90 thousand people enduring sweltering heat to watch 22 guys play with a spherical pigskin! I don’t get it! I also don’t get the great attraction of watching men drive cars around in circles for hours! I don’t have to understand, it is not about me. I just have to love; because life is about loving others as Christ loves them and loves us!
Notice something in the text though, the sheep and the coin are helpless to get back where they belong. They need a savior, a seeker who will go looking for them. You know it and I know it, if our Savior hadn’t come looking for us, we’d still be lost. It is not because of our effort, or our good intentions, that we have a place in the fold, but because Jesus came seeking the lost. Jesus still seeks the lost. And because we appreciate Him we imitate Him… Remember the saying that imitation is highest form of flattery. And that is flattery in a positive sense. But perhaps the corollary is also true – if we do not imitate Jesus, if we do not do what He did, if we do not try to be like Him, perhaps we do not truly appreciate Him. I have to look in the mirror every month or so, or weekly, daily, hourly… and ask myself if my actions make me look like a Christ imitator. I have to be honest with myself – I don’t always look like Christ.
Perhaps one reason the church has lost so much of its influence in the world is that we have forgotten, or neglected, to imitate the Lord in His work of seeking. Too often we have become the ninety and nine, safe in the shelter of the fold, thinking ’99 of the 100 ought to be enough.’ This isn’t new stuff, folks – we, in the church, have recognized since before I was born that we have a tendency to rest in the shelter of the fold! I have to remind myself, and I have to hold myself accountable for imitating Christ to seek those who are not safe in the shelter of the fold.
I shared with you that I read the books of Harry Potter series this summer. I am aware that many Christian critics have derided the author JK Rowling for her use of a “magical” world of wizardry for the setting of the series. However, I cannot help but wonder if those critics have either read the books, or have any familiarity with Western literature of the last 1000 years all of which was fundamentally Christian literature until about 50 years ago!
The Potter books are packed with Christian symbolism with Christ figures in every novel revealed as the only hope against the forces of darkness which seem to be advancing in the world. They are presented as ‘children’s stories’ but are anything but childish. The plot lines follow the classic struggle of good and evil, truth and consequences, pride and prejudice, and the inevitable consequences of our human choices when we choose the easy thing over the right thing. Harry does not always make the right choices, neither did King David.
With hundreds of millions of copies sold, seeds of Christian symbolism have been quietly and effectively sown in the minds, and hearts, of countless souls – many, maybe most, of which are “out on the hills far away, far from the gates of gold,” needing a seeker to bring them home. Too often we good, respectable, Christian folk are content to take our place in the fold, and retreat from imitating Christ in seeking the lost.
Platform Nine and Three Quarters at King’s Cross train station is the mystical portal through which young students leave the ordinary world to discover and explore a world of spiritual dimension that tugs at the heart of every human heart. Young learners, students, pass through platform 9¾ at Kings Cross station to discover that they have a destiny greater than the mundane world. They have gifts and talents, and a greater purpose to influence the world. There is also a blatant recognition that the students can make a choice to influence the world for greater good of all, or for advancing their personal ambition.
Part of our Christian responsibility is to change the world, to influence it for God’s honor and glory. We are the agents of Christ’s continuing presence and action in the world. St. Augustine said that ‘every human heart has a God shaped hole and is restless until that hole is filled.’ Nothing that the world can offer properly fills that hole, only God. Many try to fill the vacuum with other things, sex, drugs, possessions, knowledge, reputation, a myriad of transitory things, all of which leave us profoundly empty. Only when we receive Christ by faith, are our hearts filled with the purpose for which we were created; to re-present God’s love and grace to the world.
It was no mistake that Rowling named the station Kings Cross – the cross of the king is the only way to enter the spiritual world. Platform Nine and Three Quarters reflects a uniquely Wesleyan theology that Rowling, though she is Presbyterian, was probably well aware of.
At the time of Wesley there were two predominant views of salvation; one position, epitomized in the Roman Catholic church, was that God had created humanity good, and that sin had tarnished that goodness. In this view, acts of penance restored the polish and shine – enough “Hail Mary’s” and “Our Fathers” took care of the sin. The other position was the Protestant perspective that sin had caused a fall to total depravity and that humans were helpless to do anything to save ourselves. Therefore, those who God chose to redeem were redeemed, and too bad for the others!
Wesley, on the other hand believed that God’s work in Jesus Christ raised all of humanity, every human being, from the depths of helpless depravity to a place of response-ability, the ability to respond to God’s grace – to strive to imitate Christ or to chose to turn away from the Cross. We might say that God did nine and three quarters of the work, and left us with just the final quarter that would will take us to the perfect 10. That final quarter is not any good work, of our own, but our acceptance of God’s gracious gift, offered to us without price. “Here it is,” but we have to receive it, accept it, to own it.
The entrance to platform 9¾ is through a solid brick wall that must be penetrated by faith. Those without faith do not even realize there is a world on the other side of that wall. Many in our world, “lost on the hills,” do not even know there is more to life than the transient joys and sorrows of this earthly life. Trusting in Christ, by faith, gives us entry to a whole new dimension of life.
Once the student train from King’s Cross Platform 9¾ has arrived in the village, first year students are separated from the other students for transport to the school, Hogwarts. Upperclassmen are transported by carriages, while first year students carry lighted lanterns as they cross the lake in boats. Only first year students, carrying light in anticipation of discovering meaning and purpose for their lives, approach the school through the water; a baptismal symbol of initiation into the Church – Christ’s Body.
The Hogwarts school itself was established a thousand years earlier by four founders who sought to share a love of learning with young students. (Perhaps it is more than coincidence that the Bible has four Gospels – four founders – from whence the single life and message of Jesus is presented.) While many criticize the school as a school of wizardry, we are amiss to forget that the first institutions of higher learning, established a thousand years ago, were primarily Christian monastic institutions. Hogwarts, as presented in the Harry Potter series, is a place where ancient books are studied to re-learn great wisdom from the past. The school is towered with stone spires and filled with living icons of great men and women from the past – a cloud of witnesses to the ancient wisdom often casually dismissed in an era idolizing modern discovery and invention. The Bible is a collection of ancient books still carrying great wisdom from the past even in our age of modern discovery and invention. It may be ignored, dismissed, even assailed – but God’s word is the same ancient wisdom today that it was yesterday… The church is where that ancient wisdom is re-learned in each generation.
Rowling has effectively planted seeds of Christian symbolism in millions of minds with a story line that calls forth a resonance in every human heart. Her characters are not larger than life – they are very accessible and real. Just like us they struggle with choices, loyalties, friendships, feelings, ambition, and destiny. The stories follow the maturing of a young seeker to a confident believer in a series of difficult and uncomfortable growing pains. They call us to grow, ourselves, as we watch the hero, Harry struggle to make the choice between the easy and the right. Harry does not always make the best choice, and the severe consequences of taking an easy choice over the right choice leave their own lessons in emotional scars.
It is a sobering reminder that our choices also have dire consequences. We may choose to be satisfied merely to be safe in the fold, but if so we are diminished ourselves by the absence of the one lost on the hills. Or we may choose to be satisfied with 9 coins out of the ten, losing a tithe, a tenth, of our life. We may choose to ignore the seeds which have been planted, or decry the place or the manner in which they were planted, but we do so at the peril of not being ready to participate in the harvest and the great rejoicing of heaven as those who were lost are found and brought home.
It serves us well to be familiar with the seeds which have been planted in our world, by the Harry Potter books, but also by every other means God is using to draw people to Himself. Familiarity with the seeds allows us to participate in the cultivation, and eventually the harvest. Christ asks us to invest ourselves in others as Christ invested in us. We can imitate His way, or just be passive, satisfied to have been found ourselves.
Let me share a few of the symbol seeds which are germinating all over the world:
There is an athletic game, in the Potter books, called ‘Quidditch’ in which teams of seven players compete. There is a seeker on each team – a role which Harry plays – and the game is over when either seeker finds and catches something called a snitch. For our youth a ‘snitch’ is a little winged gold ball. But in our culture a snitch is someone who tells on others for personal gain. A snitch is a finger pointer, a pretty negative image – a pretty good description of a sinner. It isn’t much of a stretch to recognize that a contest of spiritual warfare is over when the seeker finds and brings home the sinner. That’s it – game over!
The students at Hogwarts are divided into four ‘houses,’ sharing meals and various classes together, but living in distinct and competitive groups. Not unlike our human family, even in our Christian family, divided by race, nationality, religion, sect, or tradition. While there are four houses, two receive the most attention; the house of Godric Gryffindor and the house of Salazar Slytherin. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to hear and see the imagery: Godric Gryffindor, Salazar Slytherin.
It comes as no surprise to find that most of the students who choose the ‘dark’ way are from the house of Slytherin – a house prone to pride, cunning and ambition. The books’ primary heroes are from the house of Gryffindor – a house prone to courage, integrity, honor, and sacrifice.
Predictably the house symbol of Slytherin is a snake. The temptor of pride and ambition in Genesis is clearly the model for this image. The Slytherin dorm is in the depths of the dungeon of the Hogwarts school/castle. Their house colors are shimmering silver and slimy green.
The Gryffindor dorm is high in the Castle tower, and its house colors are royal red and majestic gold. The symbol for the Gryffindor house is a lion, although the griffin of mythology has a lion’s body and an eagle’s head. The Griffin had a reputation in medieval heraldry as a fierce and violent destroyer of evil. Thus, the griffin was often used as a symbol for Christ – the one who destroyed sin in His own violent death.
But there’s more to the house of Gryffindor. The translation to English would properly be “Griffin of gold.” So this is a high, precious griffin. But take the analysis a little further – a combination of eagle and lion. The eagle is the ‘king of the birds of the air’ and the lion is called the ‘king of beasts.’ The griffin then, as a combination of eagle and lion, is “king of heaven and king of earth.” There is none other than Jesus who has been given that title! This house, then, is the house of Christ followers!
At this point I’m ready to sing “Shout to the North and the South, Sing to the East and the West, Jesus is Savior to All, Lord of Heaven and Earth!” Look at the symbolic seeds! And we’ve just barely scratched the surface!
One reason the Potter books have been such a success is that they tap into the Great Story of God’s redeeming love, and the human struggle with choice and destiny. For several decades children in Western culture have been raised on morally neutral, ethically shallow literature in an effort to promote a more tolerant society. The harvest has been an increase in fear, in property crime, in sexual promiscuity and abuse, and in violent crime against persons.
People know there is a greater story out there; our human hearts yearn for a story of truth and dignity, honesty and integrity, of love and redemption. The human heart was created to resonate with a yearning for its creator. Unfortunately, we, in the church, have too often repeated the story to ourselves, sitting in the safety of the fold, while those lost on the hills, in the desert, cry; sick and helpless and ready to die, yearning to hear the story of One who cares for them.
Of hundreds I could choose, I’ll look at just one more image to help us use the seeds planted by the Harry Potter series; the name itself. There is powerful symbolism in the names of his parents, and in the names of his antagonists, but let’s just look at Harry.
While there are some tantalizing parallels with the Christ story and Harry’s story, the author JK Rowling makes no suggestion that Harry is a Christ figure. He is fully human, but not divine. He is the orphan son of James and Lily Potter, who themselves were opponents of the dark lord.
Remembering that Rowling is British, H’s often get dropped with the cockney accent. So, instead of pronouncing it the American way “Harry” we can also pronounce it the cockney British way “’Arry.” And it is often printed that way in the book. What other words can we think of that sound like “air?” Heir – one who inherits… So in addition to his name being Harry, he is the heir of the Potter family. Well, that’s obvious since he was their only child.
So let’s look at the name “Potter.” The Bible several times uses the image of a potter to describe God; specifically using the term in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, Lamentations, Romans and the Book of Revelation. Of course in Genesis 2:1 we have the description of a potter’s work “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” So we can say Harry is of the Potter’s family – of God’s family – in the same way that you and I are part of God’s family.
Rowling, besides being a confessed Presbyterian, studied Latin and uses it liberally in her books. The early church liturgy, in Latin, is a second connection with the name Potter. The Latin word for father is p-a-t-e-r, pronounced exactly as the word potter. The most common prayer in the Western church, until the Vatican reforms of the late 1960’s was the “Pater Noster” – the “Our Father,” the Lord’s Prayer. Thus, we join Harry in the Pater family every time we call on God as our Father. We are not the incarnate Son of God, but fallen humanity seeking both image and likeness of Christ.
The story of “Harry Potter” is the story of every-person. Heir to the divine Potter’s grace because the Savior left the ninety and nine to seek the one, the everyman, the ‘anyone,’ who was, and is lost. This is what the church has taught for two thousand years; we love God not in fear as slaves or in hollow obedience a servants, but as gracious sons and daughters, seeking to imitate the life of Christ, as we live in joyful expectation of our inheritance. Harry Potter is not a symbol of Jesus Christ, but of human individuals pursuing spiritual perfection, which is found only in Christ.
I shudder to think of how many church congregations have blindly closed their doors to the harvest which God is preparing from these amazing seeds which have been sown. Many voices have risen to denounce the methods of the sower, but the seeds are sown. Some will fall on the rocky soil, others among the thorns, some in good soil.
We, too have a choice, whether to make ourselves available to the harvest for God’s kingdom from the seeds which have been sown, or to sit back, content to be safe and watch while others to do the work. The question is, ultimately, whether we choose to contribute to the rejoicing in heaven because of the lost who have been brought home.
It has been said that there are 3 kinds of people in the world, those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who have no idea what’s happening.
We can choose to imitate Christ in seeking the lost, or
we can regretfully acknowledge that there are those who are lost, or
we can be so caught up in our own problems and perspectives that we forget there are those who are lost.
I have a double assignment for us this week; two 30 minute sessions - my assignment to myself and you are welcome to participate.
Take 30 minutes away from anyone but God – go to the lake, a park, out in the back yard, somewhere away from the tasks and distractions, way from the phone – turn the cell phone off – and sit and ask to be drawn near to God – let God wrap us in loving arms and feel God’s heartbeat. Open ourselves to God’s indwelling and empowering presence.
The other 30 minutes. Go someplace public; the mall, Wal-mart, downtown, and spend 30 minutes looking at people and asking God to help us see them the way God sees them. Ask God if it is OK with Him if these people die in their sins without knowing Him. Ask God if it is OK with him for the gift of salvation to be extended but not received. Ask God if any of the people you see are on platform Nine and Three Quarters – redeemed by the Lamb but not claiming their free gift in Christ.
I’m not asking you to do anything – that will come from the stirring of the Holy Spirit - just draw close to God, and seek to see others the way God sees them.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of anything I would rather do than help some lost soul find refuge in our Fathers home. That means giving myself to the leading of the Potter’s hand.
It’s not about us – it’s about loving others as Christ loved, and loves, us.
